All About WIPO – its role and future involvement in global copyright databases
In the opening session of day two of the World Copyright Summit, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry outlined his thoughts for the future direction of his organisation and offered some assurances about the International Music Registry project – a likely hot topic of the morning.
Gurry believes change is required. ‘We need to move at a quicker pace to handle the requirements of new business models,’ he says, admitting that WIPO’s agenda needs modernising for the 21st century. ‘We are still dealing with legacy issues with broadcasters and audio visuals,’ he says, recognising the widening gap between this (20th century) agenda and what is happening in the wider copyright environment.
Interviewed by SOCAN CEO Eric Bapiste (a former Director General of CISAC), Gurry is optimisitic about the future. ‘Technology presents extraordinary opportunities for creators,’ he says, ‘but we have to get the systems right.’
He also recognises the difficulties in fashioning international treaties in the current environment (the last IP-focused ones were delivered in 1996). He sees this resulting firstly from geo-political change that has left the international community finding it difficult to agree on anything and secondly because as technologies are changing so rapidly, designing new legislation to accommodate them has become like ‘like hitting a moving target and no-one wants to take first steps that might prove to be non-neutral. Neutrality is very important.’
But isn’t that the bit that’s missing, dealing with the technology, asked Baptiste. ‘Yes,’ says Gurry, ‘but this has to come via dialogue.’ And whist he doesn’t see it as WIPO’s responsibility to impose solutions, Gurry can see a role to play for the organisation in stimulating debate ‘about financing culture in the 21st century.’
Emphasising collaboration throughout (he repeated again that there is no blueprint that WIPO can or should offer) Gurry feels that consumers must become part of the solution too. ‘Instead of always emphasising piracy, we need to engage their responsibility as part of society for creative culture. We should encourage consumers to think how we are going to continue to finance the music and films they all enjoy,’ he suggests.
In that, again, he believes the rightsholder community has a full role to play and encourages its activism to ensure its voice is heard. Otherwise, he believes that technology or the market will ‘impose solutions that may or may not be suitable’.
Gurry argues for a balanced approach requiring the coordination of the legal environment, infrastructure, culture change and new business models and believes that WIPO may have a stronger role to play in ‘pulling it all together more coherently.’
Another WIPO strength is its experience and knowledge of running successful registries and he sees this as an area for future development. It might require a change of governance, he says, but he is keen to offer WIPO’s assistance in being part of the solution in delivering a global database of rights information. He refers to the two ideas currently on the table; the International Music Registry (IMR) and the Global Repertoire Database (GRD).
Baptiste highlighted rightsholder concerns that Google may be being lined-up as a sub-contractor in the IMR project. Gurry is quick to deal with this one. ‘We have discussed the future of copyright with them (Google),’ he says, ‘and we share a vision but we haven’t gone there as far as IMR. If Google agreed to be part of the project, it would have to be on our terms: a global public asset, free for all, owned by no-one, available to everyone and for use with whatever business model.’
So that’s cleared that up, but questions of ownership and access to any global database are going to continue for some time. Because whilst everyone agrees it’s a good idea, there’s considerable ground yet to be covered in finding a comfortable solution for all.
Adrian Crookes